{"id":9216,"date":"2008-02-03T21:14:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-04T02:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2008\/02\/03\/openbsd-serial-console\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T11:36:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T15:36:30","slug":"openbsd-serial-console","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2008\/02\/03\/openbsd-serial-console\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenBSD Serial Console"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/openbsd_macppc_serial_console.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/openbsd_macppc_serial_console.png\" height=640 width=456 border=0><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Serial consoles are cool, and OpenBSD on a machine with Open Firmware makes it easy.<\/p>\n<p>First, I came across <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technick.net\/public\/code\/cp_dpage.php?aiocp_dp=pincabnul_null_mac_to_pc\">these directions<\/a> for making Mac to PC (MiniDIN 8 to DB9) null modem cables and made one out of a spare connector from the Honda Music Link work, some CAT5, a new female DB9, and a old DB9 shell.<\/p>\n<p>After hooking this up and starting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chiark.greenend.org.uk\/~sgtatham\/putty\/\">PuTTY<\/a> as VT220 on COM1 at 57600 I booted into OF and ran the following commands:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><tt>setenv input-device scca<br \/>\nsetenv output-device scca<br \/>\nreset-all<\/tt><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>After this the box rebooted, the monitor stayed blank, and the OpenBSD bootloader showed up on the serial terminal. One of the many nice things about OpenBSD macppc is that it&#8217;s bootloader  and kernel boot messages automatically go to the output to the OF console. All I had to do was ensure that this line was in <tt>\/etc\/ttys<\/tt> and the first serial port becomes a real console:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><tt>console \"\/usr\/libexec\/getty std.57600\"  vt220   on  secure      # for serial<\/tt><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Oh, and in case you&#8217;re wondering how I got a serial port on the G4 AGP I&#8217;ve been fooling with: I picked up an old Griffin G4Port on eBay. This is a drop-in replacement for the modem which provides an old MiniDIN 8 Apple-type serial port on the back panel.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to write up a lot more about this box on my main site after it&#8217;s up and running.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Serial consoles are cool, and OpenBSD on a machine with Open Firmware makes it easy. First, I came across these directions for making Mac to PC (MiniDIN 8 to DB9) null modem cables and made one out of a spare connector from the Honda Music Link work, some CAT5, a new female DB9, and a\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,11,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-making-things","category-moved-from-livejournal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9216"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24693,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9216\/revisions\/24693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}